Wednesday, February 4, 2009

my chinny chin chin

Observation is not my strong point, or so I've been told. The first three years of my college career, I paid my college bills by working in the school cafeteria, babysitting, and cleaning house. (I think it goes without saying that I had very little social life.) The cooks in the cafeteria were older women of African-American descent, and one of them had, for lack of a better word, curly chin whiskers. I had never, ever seen this before, and was never sure whether I was simply befuddled by them or repulsed. Fast forward ten years, and the church I was attending had an older lady who had LONG hairs sticking out of her chin. Not only were they long, but they really stood out against her pale skin. I was appalled. It wasn't that there was so many of them, but they were just so prominent. I decided then and there that if it should ever happen to me I would either pluck them or cut them. Not long after that I ran across several magazine articles about women who had taken hormone treatments for medical reasons and then had problems with beards. At the time I was writing quite a bit, and in one of my stories where I was attempting to illustrate something being out of place, I wrote "It stood out like the hairs on a woman's chin." When that was read in my critique group, every woman in the room gasped and rubbed their chins, and all the men died laughing. I was a bit surprised. Four months later I discovered not only was this normal, but that I too was victim to this strange phenomenon. Hence, I can't help but wonder: Were the three little pigs actually sows?